New Cycle Route Across Spain

[pistonbroke]

This has been in progress for several years and it looks as though there is finally a continuous route based on the ill fated Santander-Mediterranean rail line which never actually saw any rail traffic due to the delays boring a tunnel through the Cordillera Cantabria and priority changes post Franco. The Cantabrian mountains south of Santander are still a barrier as the 8km tunnel at Engaña, although complete, is deemed too dangerous due to roof collapses. The solution involves a climb up and over on quiet lanes, the views are outstanding. I have included several sections in various iterations of the Spanish Divide route as bridges and shorter tunnels have been upgraded or rebuilt and incorporated into the Via Verde. An attractive scenario would be to take the ferry from Portsmouth or Plymouth to Santander and fly back from Valencia, Alicante or Castellon. The line is extremely scenic and passes many places of historic interest, such as Burgos and Teruel.For the film buffs it was used to replicate the Russian steppes in Dr Zivago and nearby the Sad Hill Cemetery, the set of the gunfight in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I'd say 100-130km a day is perfectly doable so a week's holiday with both weekends should get it done. It's deffo on my to do list, probably this September/October. Ironically getting from Cataluña to Santander by train could be the most difficult hurdle for me.
Link to the wikiloc listing
https://es.wikiloc.com/rutas-cicloturis ... -204766107
This site describes an 11 day itinerary and a useful interactive map of places to stay and things to see
https://conalforjas.com/santander-mediterraneo/

[Tractionman]

Many thanks, that looks brilliant!

I have been musing recently about picking up my Camino again, but continuing not by foot but by bike from Burgos (where I left off in 2005 after getting ill!), but had been puzzling about the best cycling route to Burgos from the ferry port (Santander)--presumably the old rail trail highlighted here is slightly easier as far as gradients are concerned for getting up to Burgos from sea level?

I'll have a closer look at the route. If I do get back to the Camino (possibly next year), I'd cycle Burgos--Santiago, then train it with the bike back along the north coast to Santander, to pick up the ferry back to Ireland

[pistonbroke]

Just to clarify, the trail follows the old railway line and gradients for 60km until the village of Vega de Pas but that's where the easy going stops. The 8 km tunnel I mentioned is not usable and requires major investment to clear a roof collapse so the route climbs up and over with a gradient of 700km in 20km to a col where it runs along a windfarm service road and decends to a really beautiful section to Puenteday. This section has only recently been reinstated as there were a couple of key bridges that had been demolished. I rode it last year and can vouch for that. The section from Oña to Burgos is about 40km with a 1-2% incline and again I can vouch for it's completeness. Off road in this area can be slow g3oing in wet weather which is quite common.
Strangely this has just popped up on YouTube, gives a flavour of the route to Burgos once they get to the Via Verde at the southern mouth of the disused tunnel
https://youtu.be/dRhySx9qZC4?si=fDdkepSgtinkKSwY

[Tractionman]

Strangely this has just popped up on YouTube, gives a flavour of the route to Burgos once they get to the Via Verde at the southern mouth of the disused tunnel
https://youtu.be/dRhySx9qZC4?si=fDdkepSgtinkKSwY

Many thanks for this, I did try following the route on the map layers visible on wikiloc to see what sort of roads etc were being included in the non-rail trail sections, I'll take a look at the vid ta